Then, one evening, she discovered Letty standing in the bathroom, surrounded by strands of hair.
A pair of kitchen scissors rested in her hand.
“Letty?” Piper asked carefully. “What happened?”
The girl’s hair had been cut unevenly around her shoulders. She held a bundle of the cut hair tied with a ribbon, and her expression suggested she was expecting a lecture.
“Please don’t be mad, Mom.”
Piper took a breath. “I’m trying to understand what happened before I decide how I feel about it.”
Letty looked down.
“There’s a girl in my class named Millie,” she explained. “She had cancer. She’s doing better now, but her hair hasn’t grown back the way it used to.”
Piper listened as her daughter described something that had happened at school.
Some boys had laughed at Millie’s appearance. Millie had tried to pretend she wasn’t bothered, but later Letty heard her crying in the bathroom.
